Bike Thievery

Having a bike in Finland is to worry about it being stolen. This seems like an overstatement, but it isn’t.

Finns, by and large, ride unapologetically practical, relatively inexpensive bikes. And there are a lot of them. One-speeder Jopos that would be dorky if they weren’t so massively cool, are kind of the standard Finnish bike. They aren't a great ride or anything. They are just somewhat practical with their built-in cargo racks over the rear-wheel fender, and they’re kinda cute. Knock offs abound, but the Jopo seems to be the cultural gold standard; the Levi's of Finnish bikes.

My kids riding their un-stolen-but-used Jopo bikes

But compared with enjoying riding their Jopos, Finns are more afraid of getting their Jopo stolen. So much so, a Jopo comes equipped with a lock that is welded to the seat stay of the frame, with a key-freed bar that swings between the spokes of the rear wheel, locks into a receiver welded into the opposite seat stay, which stops the wheel from rolling, rendering the bike unrideable. Built-in protection...well, at least if you’re unable to pick it up and walk away with it. So, protection against bike thieves 10 and under.

The bicycle per capita rate here is greater compared to anywhere else I’ve lived. This obviously has much to do with my last blog and paved bike trail capacity. Yet in a month living in a city of over 100,000 dwellers, all riding bikes like crazy every day, I’ve yet to set foot in a bike shop here. But I can buy a bike lock just about anywhere. I've seen them at newstands. Just saying for effect.

I don’t know where they get the bikes. I should point out again that this is a very lazy blog, doing pretty much no research, so I haven’t tried hard to look for a shop selling Jopos, or Santa Cruz for that matter (I’ve yet to see a Santa Cruz bike here, not a Specialized either, come to think of it). But with all the Jopos I see daily, I sure should’ve seen by now where to buy one—which begs another blog topic—marketing.

Big sporting goods retailers sell bikes here just like in the US. As a bike person, I’ve noticed this while looking for hockey and salibandy stuff for the kids. Right now, if I absolutely had to buy a bike at this moment, I’d head to a sports store like XXL (a Finnish big box sporting goods store) or Intersport, because I’ve seen them there. (To be clear, I would not do this...) These stores carry big international-manufacturers (like Scott), low- to mid-range bikes with some commuters, and some odd smaller-named-likely-Chinese-produced (Ghost?) ones. No Jopos nor even many Treks, for that matter.

Bike marketing here is not at all like the American bike shop or online presence where the top of the line bikes steal the show. I don't know that I've seen any marketing of bikes here. Despite the high ridership, I don't think most Finns have come in real-life contact with a $7000+ enduro mountain bike or nice-to-top-end road machine. I at once miss it and adore it. None of that needing to have the best because you took it up business, that I'm such a total sucker for, though great equipment is worth it. Just saying. Mimmu has certainly noticed this difference while in Duluth as I try to explain why my Santa Cruz or De Rosa are exceptional. But why would you buy one here? It’s just going to get stolen anyway.

Despite this robust, practical biking culture, bike thievery overshadows it all. To every Finn, from Mummo in Saynatsalo, to active enduro athlete Suvi, here in the city, locking your bike is paramount. Whenever the topic of bikes being stolen has come up around me, I think every single Finn I’ve talked to has had their bike stolen. Every. Single. One. For a lazy blog pseudo-statistic, that’s an amazing one!

I’ve owned easily 20+ bikes in my life, and I have never had one stolen. Not one. I left my old Trek campus bike by the library in college once and it disappeared one day, only to be discovered across campus by a dorm in the spring, at which point I rode it back to my dorm, parked it there, and that was that. Whomever it was who WAS riding it since the library hiatus, seemed to have formed and acknowledged a phantom pact with me, agreeing that, yeah, it's my bike and should be outside Starr for the rest of the school year. By contrast, I fully expect to have my bike stolen for the first time in my life in law-abiding Finland.

Which is what's so weird about it. Finland launched a Covid contact-tracing app two days ago that the government really pushed to publicize and activate. Since launch, 880,000 Finns got and are using the app--15.8% of the population signed up within 48 hours of launch. When Covid hit in the spring, Finland locked down the province around Helsinki for 45 days. Not a protest, despite police on the roadways stopping people trying to come in or leave. 45 days! That's a pretty compliant society with unwritten social contracts. So, why all the bike stealing?

We watch the Finnish news nightly. One thing we love here, is, the news is still news. It isn’t a steady stream of sordid crime stories balanced by feel-good human interest pieces. It is a frank presentation of reporting around Finland and the world. There’s some Finnish crime, but very little compared to that we’re used to seeing reported, and perhaps actually face, in the US. That alone makes life feel more at ease. But bikes elicit something else entirely here that they do not at home.

Finns are so conditioned to this bike stealing, that it really has turned into the essential victim-as-guilty situation. When a kid comes home crying that their bike was stolen, parents don’t empathize or even sympathize. They ask the kid what THEY did wrong. “Didn’t you LOCK it?!” “Did you lock it WELL?!” “WHAT did you lock it TO?!” Then a procession of how the security system just wasn’t well thought out enough to thwart the inevitability of a really adept bike thieve beating you at this game. I feel if I get my bike stolen, I’ll get that knowing look from Mimmu when I get home-- “stupid American didn’t lock his bike well enough. Well, learn the hard way.”

With its relatively low crime rate and human security well addressed, could Finland be focusing its criminal elements onto the relatively harmless path of stealing bicycles? It has cracked the code on so many headline-making world's-best lists in recent years, that this seems almost unbelievable; a wrinkle in the fabric that could be--should be--straightened easily enough.

Perhaps it's best to leave well enough alone though? Maybe its clepto-maniacal sector has settled on contributing to society while getting their stealing fix through bikes, leaving more serious crimes uncommitted? After all, it’s the bikers fault for not locking it better.